16 March 2010

New Monitors are Energy Scoreboards for the Home

Intel's prototype for a home energy monitor gathers data from appliances.

UTILITIES are gradually installing smart meters that can tell homeowners the price of the electricity they’re using at the time, including discounts for off-peak hours.

But those meters aren’t yet in all that many homes.

There will soon be new options, though, for consumers who want to save money by using energy more efficiently. Companies are coming up with dozens of computer-based devices that monitor electricity costs, outlet by outlet, inside a home.

Intel has created a prototype for a home energy monitor that gathers information beamed to it from the appliances plugged into wall sockets, said Joe Jensen, general manager of Intel’s embedded-computing division in Chandler, Ariz. This sleek touch screen can hang on the kitchen wall or sit on a countertop. It can show, for example, which appliances are on and what they are costing to operate, he said.

The panel communicates wirelessly with the outlets, turning appliances off or on when instructed, or suggesting ways to change energy use in the house, he said.

The Intel display is meant to entertain as well as instruct, Mr. Jensen said. Family members may use its built-in camera to leave video messages for one another. They can also run dozens of applications on the monitor, just as they would on a smartphone, looking up addresses in the Yellow Pages, tracking packages and checking for weather and traffic conditions.

Intel won’t be offering the home monitors directly to consumers. It is working with manufacturers that will use its designs and its processors to run their devices, Mr. Jensen said. A high-end version could cost consumers $400 or more, he said, but the company is working with a high-volume manufacturer on a cheaper version.

He said some of the cost might eventually be underwritten by utilities that could charge a small monthly fee for the unit, as part of campaigns to conserve energy.

Tenrehte Technologies, a company based near Rochester, has developed an alternative device, called the Picowatt, that lets people use their smartphones or laptop computers, for example, to control lighting and appliances like air-conditioners or roaster ovens.

The Picowatt, which plugs into an ordinary wall outlet, is small — slightly larger than a cellphone charger. But it can communicate with the Wi-Fi router on a home network just as laptops do, said Jennifer Indovina, chief executive of Tenrehte. Plug an audio system, for example, into the Picowatt, then plug the Picowatt into a wall outlet, and it will calculate information on energy use and beam it to the router, she said.

Each Picowatt hosts its own Web page on the Internet. The page’s address is generated based on the serial number of the plug.

The Picowatt, from Tenrehte Technologies, makes it possible to use smartphones or laptop computers to control lighting and small appliances.

“You can see current settings in real time,” Ms. Indovina said, “and what it is costing right now to run anything on that plug.”

The plugs will be on sale starting on Earth Day, April 22, at Amazon, Best Buy and other outlets, she said. The price will probably be $79.99, she said.

Once a Picowatt is plugged in, “it pulls the voltage to turn itself on and look for the router,” Ms. Indovina said. This process should be automatic, but because so many routers are on the market, she said, the Picowatt comes with a USB thumb drive and a CD to use as a backup during installation to help routers identify its signals.

Manufacturers are also making appliances that might someday be adapted to communicate directly with utilities or with smart meters when they are installed. General Electric sells a water heater with a built-in communications port to take advantage of utilities’ discount rates for off-peak use.

“When you get these variable rates,” said Kevin Nolan, a vice president of technology at G.E. in Louisville, Ky., “we will have a low-cost communications module that will hook into the heater and communicate with whatever smart meter you have in your home.”

Steve McMaster, the chief executive of Sam Six, a company in Portland, Ore., that develops software for utilities to make distribution and transmission of electricity more efficient, would like to see devices throughout a home fitted with computer chips so that they could use a wireless network to report directly to utilities.

“This is a cheaper way to get information back to the power stations, bypassing the need for physical installation of smart meters.” Mr. McMaster said. “The utility could talk directly to the oven for example,” he said, running it at a less expensive time of day.

The potential nationwide savings from such conservation are tremendous, he said. “By using the power that we have efficiently,” he said, “we could avoid the need to build power stations just for peak demand.”